


Preparation

by lalaietha



Series: The Apocalypse According to C (with some Help from S and H) [1]
Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're sure?" Calvin asked aloud, as he slid his wallet into his jeans pocket and pulled his hoodie on over his head. "I mean - " he trailed off, at a loss for words. "You're really sure?"</p><p>"This isn't the kind of thing I'd get wrong," Hobbes replied, stepping back from the window and shaking himself all over. He didn't even sound offended that Calvin was questioning him, just solemn and serious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preparation

**Author's Note:**

> written for DW-user ~law-nerd for the Help Pakistan auction

_They say this isn't the first. That the first was some Canadian city, on the West Coast, flattened before anyone even knew what happened. No mushroom cloud, no detonation: just a blinding white light and then the devastation spreading like a storm from the center. All screaming wind. All shining bright. And then nothing, just everyone else in the area standing around staring going_ what the fuck? __

 _They say that was the first. That this is the second. But it's only a few hours later, and some people don't stay plugged in these days. Information overload, people don't want to turn on their televisions, switch their news-feeds. A lot of people know, but a lot of people don't, and besides, it's a very long way away. In another country, even. There's no reason to think it could happen here._

 _Not until it is._

*****

It was a week before the end of the world.

Calvin did up his shoes. His hiking boots were in the Wrangler, which he'd named Old Faithful out of a sense of hope. He ran through his mental checklist again and again, worried that he'd forgotten something. On the one hand, it wasn't an unreasonable worry: he forgot things a lot, hazard of the kind of brain he had. On the other hand, it wasn't likely, either. He'd checked and rechecked over days, and Hobbes had checked and rechecked, and what Calvin didn't catch Hobbes usually did.

He kept waiting for some kind of remark from Hobbes, as he did a careful sweep of the apartment, but the tiger was uncharacteristically silent, poised and focused, staring out the window onto the street.

"You're sure?" Calvin asked aloud, as he slid his wallet into his jeans pocket and pulled his hoodie on over his head. "I mean - " he trailed off, at a loss for words. "You're really sure?"

"This isn't the kind of thing I'd get wrong," Hobbes replied, stepping back from the window and shaking himself all over. He didn't even sound offended that Calvin was questioning him, just solemn and serious.

"Okay," Calvin agreed. "Okay." Realizing he was repeating himself, he looked around, shrugged, and said. "Time to go then, I guess. I want to stop by the cemetery on our way out."

"Of course you do," Hobbes said, and this time there was a hint of irritability.

"It won't slow us down that much," Calvin said, mildly, and Hobbes sighed.

"They're _dead_ ," he said. "They don't care."

"I do," Calvin replied. "C'mere already."

"Fine, fine," Hobbes groused. "Just don't leave me in the jeep this time."

Calvin picked up the worn stuffed tiger and put it in one of the webbed pouches at the side of his back-pack. "I won't," he promised.

 

The grave-markers were the flat kind, the kind that made the cemetery custodians happy because they were easy to mow over. One of that fraternity (Calvin had come across that way of phrasing things in a book once and kind of liked it) was over navigating his way around the standing tombstones of the Greek Orthodox section when Calvin made his way over the freshly cut grass to the place where his parents and his uncle lay interred.

He brought an offering, like he always did. Today Hobbes didn't say anything sarcastic as Calvin broke the small bottle of his dad's favourite scotch and let it seep into the ground before leaving the pieces of the glass beside, as Calvin did the same with a bottle of his mom's favourite perfume, and crumbled to bits pieces of his uncle's favourite (really terrible) cheese and scattered them.

Dr Phan used to come out, when he was still a kid, to help him leave the offerings. She got it. She got why he carefully saved up his money to buy things just to break them, just to scatter them, just to leave them. It made it better than the alternative. Flowers and sad songs and stuffed animals and crap were for other people. Calvin would leave broken offerings. They only weren't _burnt_ offerings because they couldn't work out an accommodation with the custodian no matter how hard they tried.

Crouched down in the wet, cut grass, backpack on his back and the end of the world in front of him, Calvin put his head in his hands and took a deep breath against the hot pinprick behind his eyelids.

"Think of it this way," Hobbes offered. "If they were still alive, you'd have to make a really hard choice."

Calvin considered saying, _Hobbes, sometimes you're a jerk_ , but instead he reached out and traced the names on each stone with the fingers of his right hand. "Yeah," he said, because Hobbes was right. And even so, he wasn't going to be able to come back here again, to leave his broken offerings and pretend that his mom was still there to nag him about the garbage, his dad to tell him stuff that absolutely wasn't true but (in the end) was way more interesting than the truth, his uncle to laugh and tell him where to look up what the real answer was.

 _If you do have any power_ , he found himself thinking, remembering all the different cultures with ancestor-worship, everything he'd ever read, _look out for us, okay? We're going to need it._

He stood up. "Let's get going."

 

******

 _They say two cities have been wiped off the map this morning, but nobody can say how, or by who._

The news-footage is starting, finally. Just starting. There are helicopters flying around the devastated circles, where everything is flattened rubble and nothing lives. No black, no char, no fire _, which makes no sense: just . . . devastation, just destruction, just all the colours of what has been torn down, and the spatters of red, so much red -_

Everywhere starts emergency preparedness. And everywhere there are police and security and uniforms telling people to walk, don't run, drive slowly, proceed in orderly fashion back into the buildings, back into the dorms, back into their homes, back into wherever they are, measures are being taken for your security, please stay off the phone-lines if at all possible to lessen the load.

The traffic is such that internet is sluggish no matter where you are, and the sites for CNN, FoxNews, CBC and BBC all crash intermittently, unable to handle the hits.


End file.
